The present invention relates to textile wet treatment machines and more particularly to horizontal wet treatment machines for textiles and textile material carriers therefor, such as horizontal package dyeing machines and carriers for supporting yarn packages therein.
Textile dyeing machines are normally cylindrical in shape for effectively withstanding the interior pressures developed during dyeing cycles. In such dyeing machines where the cylindrical vessel is arranged vertically, the textile material to be treated, such as yarn packages supported on vertical tubes, can be arranged in a cylindrical configuration to substantially fill the cross-section of the dye vessel, but vertically arranged cylinders require substantial vertical space above the vessel for loading and unloading. On the other hand, horizontally disposed cylindrical dye vessels can be easily loaded from floor level, but the textile material is not easily arranged to fully occupy the cylindrical shape of the vessel. Rather, the arrangement of the textile material, such as yarn packages stacked on tubes, is normally rectangular in cross-section, rather than circular, thereby leaving voids between the textile material being treated and the wall and bottom of the vessel. Also, with horizontal dyeing machines, there is not normally a way of limiting the volume of treating liquid when less than a full capacity batch of textile material is being treated.
At the present time, the cost of using excess treating liquid and the accompanying environmental problems make it important to minimize to the greatest extent possible the amount of treating liquid that is used in relation to the material being treated. Attempts have been made to deal with this problem by providing interior vertical walls in the vessel itself to confine the treating liquid to the space occupied by and closely adjacent to the textile material being treated. However, such vertical walls make draining of liquid that inadvertently flows over the walls difficult and also makes it difficult to gain access for cleaning in the space between the vertical walls and the cylindrical walls of the vessel.
It is also known to use walled "dummy" carriers as inserts in horizontal dyeing machines to occupy space not needed when less than a full capacity batch of textile material is being treated. An example of such use of a "dummy" carrier is disclosed in Barriquand et al U.S. Pat. No. 4,884,418. However, the use of such "dummy" carriers, while reducing the volume of treating liquid needed, does not totally fill the space between the "dummy" carrier and the vessel walls and bottom.
Despite the improvements of the prior art, the need still exists for further reductions in the volume of liquid used to not only improve the efficiency of horizontal wet treatment machines operation but to further reduce the effluent to be disposed of after treatment.